


A New Beginning

by nymja



Series: Do or Do Not [6]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen, Tumblr fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-11
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-13 03:52:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5693542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nymja/pseuds/nymja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rey clears her throat, pressing her hand against the window as they leave the atmosphere. “Where are we going?”</p><p>Luke is quiet. “…Home.”</p><p>--</p><p>With Rey's help, Luke takes his first steps back into a larger world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A New Beginning

 

Her Jedi Master is waiting for her at the top of the cliff again. She’s exhausted from the stairs—sweat clinging to every part of her and the hilt of her lightsaber digging into her back, but she doesn’t care.

Because she came back, and for the first time someone was expecting her.

\--

Luke makes a show of checking her arms. It’s apparently something of an old joke with him. When she wordlessly looks to him for an explanation, all he does is give her a mechanical thumbs-up. She can’t help the smile, it hasn’t come off since she landed.

“Get some sleep,” he says, handing her a blanket, “We can talk in the morning.”

She does, laying on her side and smelling the ocean. The whispers, for now, are silent.

\--

He lets her sleep in. That by itself should have been enough of a warning. The sun’s already high enough in the sky, and she wakes to the smell of something cooking. Pressing her palm against the ground, Rey propels herself up, blinking away exhaustion and focusing on the fire pit.

Luke has discarded his robe in the heat of the afternoon, the sleeves of his off-white tunic rolled up to his elbows as he maneuvers a pan over the flames. She sniffs. _Eggs!_

Her stomach gives a lurch. They don’t have eggs often. Only on special occasions.

“Good afternoon,” Luke says glibly. He flips the eggs over on the pan. This time, her stomach actually growls. “I have food.”

“Thanks,” she says, moving like lightning across the campsite. He’s barely handed her the plate when the food’s already being rapidly shoved inside her mouth.

She’s in the middle of spooning out her second helping when he starts asking.

“You met with Ben,” Luke starts. His voice is carefully neutral. Rey doesn’t know the extent to which the bonds of Master and student, uncle and nephew, travel but she thinks he can sense enough to understand that Kylo Ren is unharmed. At least by her hand.

Her hand stills on the eggs, but Luke nods at her to keep going, so she returns to eating. In between mouthfuls, she manages an answer.

“Yes, on Jakku.”

“Jakku.”

“It…it felt right. To do it there.” She swallows. “It felt like that’s where something started, you know?”

She doesn’t think he does, but Luke nods regardless. He cradles his chin in his hand, one of his fingers resting over his lips. “You didn’t fight.”

“No. Just talked.”

Luke smiles. They are becoming less rare occurrences now. “…did he have anything interesting to say?”

She shakes her head.

“Do you hear him in the Force?”

Rey hesitates, but shakes her head again. “Not anymore. But I think that’s temporary.”

Luke is quiet as she finishes her lunch. Silence lays between them, before he clears his throat.

“You were my last student.”

 _Were_? Rey’s brows furrow. She doesn’t know how to respond, so she waits for him to continue.

“Do you remember a jungle?”

Her entire body seems to go still. She closes her eyes, and it’s as if she’s there again. That place in the vision: heavy and humid air, sweat making her clothes stick to her skin, the fear of being chased, the safety of resting her cheek against someone’s back.

“I’ve seen it.” Her words are hesitant, “In visions. I…I saw a little girl, being chased. And…” She frowns.

“Its name is Yavin.” Luke’s words are a rasp. She meets his gaze and the unsettling thought that he looks _guilty_ hits her. “And we’ve been there before.”

\--

He tells her a story.

It begins with a farmboy, being the sole inheritor of a tradition far older than most could comprehend. It ends with a little girl, with three knots of brown hair, somehow escaping a massacre.

It’s not a happy story.

\--

Rey leaves the campsite without a word, once he’s done. She goes and she climbs the stairs. She walks up and up and up, until the muscles in her legs are too taut to continue and her entire body feels lifeless and cold.

She finds a place to sit, her arm slung over one knee, and watches the sun as it sets beneath an ocean. In her dreams, the waves had felt like a sanctuary. Now, she watches the tide and wonders what it means to have never had a family to wait for in the first place.

\-- 

Her Jedi Master is waiting for her at the bottom of the cliff. She’s still exhausted from hearing the truth—but she doesn’t care.

Because the past is what it is, and for now she can only move forward.

\--

He gives her a mug of tea, a whispered apology, and they both go to sleep.

This time, she dreams. About the two boys she always sees: one in the desert, and one in the jungle. She has a name for the second one now: _Ben._

\--

In the morning, she skips breakfast for the first time in her life. Luke is still asleep as she steps over him and makes her way to the clearing where she does her exercises. By mid-afternoon, she feels calmer. The physical work draining her of the need to think about the fact that Luke has known her since she was a child, that _Kylo Ren_ was once her mentor of sorts, or that any chance she had for a family was taken from her before she could even remember it.

She still doesn’t know how she survived. Or got to Jakku. Neither does Luke. And that’s not his fault, she reminds herself. It’s not Luke’s fault.

In her heart, Rey’s already forgiven him—for not looking, for not telling her he remembered her name. She already knows that. But it’s hard. It’s hard to think about the tally marks inside her home, now divided by the scar left from Kylo Ren’s lightsaber, and the matching set Luke has in his fighter. It’s hard to think about two orbits so close to each other yet never intersecting. It’s even harder to ignore the _what ifs._

What if Luke had looked for her, instead of running away.  
What if Rey could remember how she got to Jakku.  
What if Kylo Ren had stayed Ben.

 

What if Rey could have had a home.

\--

When she gets back to the campsite, Luke is packing.

She stops in her step, transfixed as she watches Luke roll up their bed mats. Dismantle the fire pit. Pour water into sealable containers. It’s not until she sees him checking out diagnostics on the fighter that she feels _panic_ as an image hits her: Luke, climbing into his fighter. Luke, not looking back as he flies away and leaves her on the ground-

“I’m not mad!” She practically cries. Her chest feels tight as she fights down panic. “You-you don’t have to go!”

Luke pauses from his work. He looks at her over his shoulder. “Yes, I do.”

Her eyes well with tears, and she feels them go over, running down her face-

Luke’s eyes widen with realization, and he says the only thing that could make anything feel alright again.

“It seats two.”

\--

They’re seated back-to-back, the space is cramped and claustrophobic with their supplies, but Rey’s never felt safer. She watches as once again the ruins of Ahch-To become smaller and smaller in the distance.

But this time is better. This time she’s not alone.

Rey clears her throat, pressing her hand against the window as they leave the atmosphere. “Where are we going?”

Luke is quiet. “…Home.”

\--

Home is an old hut in the desert. Rey blinks, looking to Luke in question.

“Is this-?”

“Tatooine,” he answers. He folds his hands in the sleeves of his robe, “The Jundland Wastes, if you want the guided tour.” There’s a glint of humor in his gaze as they both stare at sand.

And more sand.

Rey smiles, as a thought occurs to her. “Luke?”

“Yes?”

“We’ve found common ground.”

He stares at her, before shaking his head. “That was terrible.”

She nudges him with her elbow. “I know.”

Things start feeling back to normal.  
And then they go into the hut.

\--

She knows places can feel lonesome. But she’s never been anywhere that feels like _loss._ Rey follows Luke into the hut, and she grieves for something. She’s not sure what it is, but there’s something about this home: dishes for only one person, a solitary bed, how everything is coated in dust but arranged in meticulous order. With care, or discipline, or both. Her fingers drift over the walls, and she hears something—one voice, alone, but more importantly _lonely._

Rey closes her eyes, and hears it like a scream:

_This will happen again._

When she opens them, she sees Luke, sitting on the edge of the bed. His elbows rest on his knees, and he’s looking at a spot on the floor in a way which lets her know he’s somewhere else in his mind. Rey tries to listen, to parse out the very real connection she has to this forgotten place.

“This is where it started for me,” Luke explains.

Rey takes a few steps forward, and stops a few from him. Luke smiles, distantly, as he looks up at the ceiling.

“This is where I met old Ben.”

\--

He tells her a different story.

This one begins with a slave, taken from his home and trained as a Jedi. It ends with the slave’s only friend, alone in the desert.

This, too, is not a happy story.

\--

Rey sits on the ground in front of Luke, her hands pressed against the floor as she takes it all in.

“I wish I could have met him,” she offers, “I-I sense him here. He seemed terribly lonely.”

“He was,” Luke agrees. “He waited a very long time for what he needed to do.”

She looks down. “I guess we’ve all done our own shares of waiting.”

“Yes, I guess we have.”

Rey clears her throat. “I. I think I remember him. Ben.”

Luke is raw. It’s the only word she can think to describe him, as he sits in his old friend and mentor’s home, as he tells her the story of his father. He rubs his hands together slowly, as if to keep them warm even though they are in the middle of a dune sea.

“What do you remember?”

She hesitates. She doesn’t know what she should say, now. So she goes for the truth as best as she can manage it.

“He was angry. I bothered him a lot, I think.” She hears the whispers, louder and louder. _This will happen again._ “But…I only have one memory. He was carrying me on his back, back home. I felt safe.”

Luke gives her the saddest smile she thinks she has ever seen. “Ben was named for a good man.”

Rey looks around the old hut, and disagrees.

She believes, more than anything, that he was named after a lonely one.

\--

They stay in Ben’s hut for a little over the week. Training. Meditating. Talking. Luke, when it’s not too raw or painful, tells her about the other students. About how Rey, when she was small, used to chase butterflies and name plants the same way she does now. He gives her something to hold on to, he gives her memories to replace the ones that have disappeared.

They stay in Ben’s hut, until Luke is ready.

\--

“There might be others out there like me,” Rey says.

“I know.”

“They’ll need you.”

“…I know.”

“ _Leia_ needs you.”

“I know. I’m sorry”

Rey stands, and offers him her hand. “Then let’s go find them. Together.”

He looks up at her, and this time she does see the tears in his eyes. With a shaking hand, he grabs hers.

\--

She pulls him up, and they take their first steps back into the universe.


End file.
